Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album

The Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album is presented by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to "honor artistic achievement in comedy." The award was awarded yearly from 1959 to 1993 and then from 2004 to present day. There have been several minor changes to the name of the award over this time:

In 1960 and 1961 two separate awards were presented for the best spoken and for the best musical comedy performance.

In 1994 the award was restricted to spoken word comedy albums and moved into the "spoken" field. From then through 2003, it was awarded as the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Comedy Album.

In 2004 the award was reinstated within the comedy field as the Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album, once again allowing musical comedy works to be considered.

Comedy album

A comedy album is an audio recording of comedic material from a comedian or group of comedians, usually performed either live or in a studio. Comedy albums may feature skits, humorous songs, and/or live recording of stand-up comedy performances, but the most common type of comedy albums are stand up, and are often made in conjunction with a DVD with recorded video of a particular comedy show.

Some of the earliest albums recorded for popular commercial distribution were comedy albums. For example, various collections of humorous short stories recited by Cal Stewart were released by Edison Records as early as 1898.

A number of record labels specialize in the comedy genre, including AST Records, Comedy Central Records, Partee Records, Stand Up! Records, and Stereolaffs.

Comedy albums have won the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album on several occasions, including America Again: Re-becoming The Greatness We Never Weren't, by Stephen Colbert (2014) and If You Ask Me (and of Course You Won't) by Betty White (2012). The very first album to win this honor was The Best of the Stan Freberg Shows by Stan Freberg (1959), a variety album including comedy bits.

Comedy (disambiguation)

Comedy is a genre of dramatic works that have happy endings, in contrast to tragedies that have unhappy endings.

Comedy may also refer to:

See also